Rice Noodles for New Year

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year!  Thursday was the lunar New Year and it is good luck to have noodles on new year.  Being gluten free, I still wanted to have noodles but this year opted for Rice Noodles and veggies seasoned with Chinese 5 spice, sesame oil and Bragg's Aminos.  It is very satisfying and the rice noodles really do satisfy that craving for a starchy noodle.

In my last blog post, I talked about going to the Asian grocery market and what an aesthetic experience it was for me...well, this is the outcome of that inspiration.  This is a basic stir fry with broccoli, onions, carrots, snow peas, mung bean sprouts, bok choy and a fresh water chestnut sliced.  Onion, garlic and fresh gingerroot make this a wonderfully savory and warm gluten-free meal for the winter.

This is a photo of my lovely new bowl purchased at the Asian grocery.  You cannot really see the pattern on the side, but I like it a lot!  It goes well with my (admittedly) Japanese chopsticks!

Speaking of good eats, I can highly recommend Gunpowder Tea.  This green tea comes in small pearls.

The pearls 'pop' a little as they open up in the hot water...justifying the name.  This tea is really satisfying.  It is extremely high in antioxidants.  I read a study where a group of women who were being treated for breast cancer were given gunpowder tea along with a regimen of healthy foods. A second group just had the healthy foods and no gunpowder tea and a third 'control' group had neither treatment approach.  The women who also drank large amounts of the gunpowder tea had significantly lower incidents of recurrence of their cancers than both the control group and the healthy foods only group.  The critique of this study is that it was conducted with Japanese women in Japan and they live such healthy lifestyles, are minimally overweight etc., that no one could be absolutely certain that it was the gunpowder tea (highest in antioxidants of all of the green teas) that had the effect.  That would be a good study to undertake in our fast food, high stress culture.

So one of the reasons I do not usually drink a lot of green tea is that I often find it to be bitter and astringent.  I understand now that green tea should only be steeped for 1 minute.  You should only use 1 tablespoon of loose tea per 5-6 oz of water.  For tea neophytes...one pours the hot water OVER the tea leaves...scalding them.  One does not drop tea leaves or tea bags into pre-existing pots of moderately hot water.  No No No.  Boil the water, take it off the fire and for green tea, let it sit for just a few seconds until it stops its rapid boil (for English and Indian black tea, it is essential that the water be poured while boiling) and then gently pour over the leaves (use a cup with a strainer if you do not have a Chinese teapot). Enjoy while hot.

Gunpowder tea, I find, has a very mild natural sweetness to it so it needs no additives.  It is pretty important to not add things to your green tea, though I know some people who enjoy a very little lemon- I save my lemon for Earl Grey.

Well, it is snowing ferociously right now and I am happy to be enjoying a hot cup of Gunpowder Tea.

During this past week, I experimented a little with eating some gluten/flour products.  It was my natural frugality at work.  Not wanting to waste a perfectly good box of crackers, I munched on quite a few of the little buggers in the evening.  By the next morning, I had a whopping headache that lasted all day.  I think that I can safely say that my humble experiment indicates that I have made a good choice to leave Gluten products in my past and to plan a future of healthy meals without the things that make me sick!!!

Have a wonderful, healthy and safe weekend.
Love,
Terra